If you take a deposit for all AST’s you must:-

Protect the deposit with an approved scheme, and

Give tenant and all interested parties the prescribed information about their deposit and the deposit scheme.

Within 30 calendar days of physically receiving it (from April 6th 2012)

Available schemes:-

Deposit Protection Service

MyDeposits

Tenancy Deposit Scheme

Important

Do you have to protect your tenant’s deposit?

Have you read and understood the scheme rules?

Have you provided the Prescribed Information?

If in doubt seek advice from the scheme administrator

Penalties

Up to 3 times deposit fine payable back to tenant;

Can’t issue section 21 notice until full deposit returned to tenant.